Excerpt from "Reading Shakespeare's Language"

Untangling Shakespeare's winding lines can tie you up in knots. Get some tips from Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine, who are familiar with the editing of the plays and have written the essay "Reading Shakespeare's Language."

Here are all the word lists to support the reading of Grade 6 Unit 4's texts from SpringBoard's Common Core ELA series: Shakespeare dumbed down, Shakespeare's Life, Reading Shakespeare's Language, The Southpaw, A Book of Nonsense, The Millionaire Miser, Oranges; Jabberwocky; Fireflies, The Taming of the Shrew
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. immense
    unusually great in size or amount or extent or scope
    Most of his immense vocabulary is still in use, but a few of his words are not, and worse, some of his words now have meanings quite different from those they had in the sixteenth century.
  2. yield
    give over
    When reading on one's own, one must do what each actor does: go over the lines (often with a dictionary close at hand) until the puzzles are solved and the lines yield up their poetry and the characters speak in words and phrases that are, suddenly, rewarding and wonderfully memorable.
  3. problematic
    making great mental demands
    The most problematic words are those that we still use but that we use with a different meaning.
  4. variously
    in diverse ways
    Shakespeare plays with language so often and so variously that entire books are written on the topic.
  5. metaphor
    a figure of speech that suggests a non-literal similarity
    Here we will mention only two kinds of wordplay, puns and metaphors.
  6. pun
    a humorous play on words
    In The Taming of the Shrew, many scenes are funny only if we hear the puns.
  7. significant
    important in effect or meaning
    The Taming of the Shrew is not rich in metaphoric language, but metaphor is used in a powerful and significant way.
  8. rhythm
    alternation of stressed and unstressed elements in speech
    Shakespeare frequently shifts his sentences away from "normal" English arrangements--often to create the rhythm he seeks, sometimes to use a line's poetic rhythm to emphasize a particular word, sometimes to give a character his or her own speech patterns or to allow the character to speak in a special way.
  9. sequence
    serial arrangement in which things follow in logical order
    when you become puzzled by a character's speech, check to see if words are being presented in an unusual sequence.
  10. frequent
    often encountered
    Shakespeare often places the verb before the subject. More problematic is Shakespeare's frequent placing of the object before the subject and verb.
  11. primarily
    for the most part
    Inversions (words in reversed order) serve primarily to create the poetic rhythm of the lines, called iambic pentameter.
  12. script
    a written version of a play or other dramatic composition
    Finally, in reading Shakespeare's plays you should always remember that what you are reading is a performance script.
  13. dialogue
    the lines spoken by characters in drama or fiction
    The dialogue is written to be spoken by actors who, at the same time, are moving, gesturing, picking up objects, weeping, shaking their fists.
  14. imply
    suggest as a logically necessary consequence
    It is immensely rewarding to work carefully with Shakespeare's language so that the words, the sentences, the wordplay, and the implied stage action all become clear
  15. considerable
    large in number, amount, extent, or degree
    these are pleasures that certainly make it worth the considerable effort to "break the code" of Elizabethan poetic drama and let free the remarkable language that makes up a Shakespeare text.
Created on Fri Aug 15 14:10:11 EDT 2014 (updated Fri Aug 15 22:54:35 EDT 2014)

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